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CBS Funded Invasions to Televise and Other Extreme Lengths in History

Khalid Elhassan February 26, 2021 35 min

Cuban exiles captured by Castro's forces during the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Agence France-Presse

19. To Demonstrate That He Was Not Soft on Christianity, the Mad Caliph Went on a Christian Persecution Bender

The son of the Fatimid Caliph Abu Mansur and a Christian consort named Al Azizah, Al Hakim became Caliph at age eleven after his father’s death. The religion of the Mad Caliph’s mother opened him to allegations of being an insufficiently zealous Muslim, and of being soft on Christianity. The accusations bothered him, so he went to extreme lengths to prove his Islamic zeal, and show that he was no Christian puppet. As in exceptionally extreme lengths: he launched an unprecedented wave of Christian persecutions, and ordered the destruction of churches and Christian monuments throughout his empire.

Inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, destroyed by the Mad Caliph Al-Hakim, and rebuilt after his death. Christianity Today

To demonstrate that having a Christian mother did not make him a soft Muslim, Al-Hakim abandoned the tolerance hitherto displayed by Muslim rulers to Christians and Jews. He went on a persecution bender, destroying synagogues and churches, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem – the one housing the cave where Jesus is thought to have lain before his resurrection. The Mad Caliph also banned pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and ordered Christians and Jews to wear distinguishing clothing to identify them. Jews were further singled out by being required to wear bells, so they could be identified by sound as well as sight.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.